Fullerton Gymnast Lands on His Feet After Injury

It was only two years ago that doctors told Eli Rodriguez he might have to be careful how he landed when he hopped out of bed in the morning. There would be no more triple-backs off the high bar, they told him. Not with his landing gear.

Rodriguez, one of the country’s highest-flying junior national gymnasts, was informed that he might be permanently grounded. Sweep that floor exercise routine under the mat, the doctors said. Don’t bother tending those parallel bars. Lock up those vault tricks and throw away the key.

Rodriguez, then a senior at Valley High School in Sacramento, was competing for the Byers Gymnastics Club in a meet at California one April afternoon in 1985. He was leading the all-around competition and needed only to complete his dismount from the high bar to collect his first-place medal. “The last event,” he remembered. “The last dismount.”

And it was almost the last of his career. He landed straight-legged, without bending his knees to help absorb the shock of returning to earth after completing three somersaults. Something had to give, and his right knee did. Tests the next day revealed that Rodriguez had mangled enough knee ligaments to require reconstructive surgery, and a promising gymnastics career was in jeopardy.

Before the injury, Rodriguez--a three-year member of the junior national team--was being recruited by some of the powers in collegiate gymnastics, including Nebraska, Illinois and Cal. But those schools backed off when they heard of Rodriguez’s injury. Who wants to offer a scholarship to a gymnast who might need a ladder to dismount from the high bar?

But, as any athletic administrator at Cal State Fullerton will tell you, Dick Wolfe’s methods are a little different. Wolfe, so the legend goes, once arranged to have a carnival set up on the Fullerton campus without getting permission from school officials. Administrators discovered this plan when one arrived at school to find a Ferris wheel in his parking space.

Wolfe has always had this crazy idea that his Titans could compete with schools that had several things Fullerton didn’t. Things such as a budget surplus. And Wolfe knew that the only way to do this would be to take a few calculated risks, particularly in recruiting.

“I’ve had a difficult time getting the best gymnasts to come to Cal State Fullerton,” Wolfe said. “It’s always been someone who was injured or quit another university, or someone from a school that dropped its program.”

So it was that Eli Rodriguez received Wolfe’s offer of an athletic scholarship while in a hospital bed.

Wolfe says this wasn’t quite the gamble it appeared to be. He had known Rodriguez since he coached him as a 9-year-old in a summer gymnastics camp. “He was a tough kid,” Wolfe said. “Tough as nails. He would wear this hat on the high bar. He was a cocky little guy.”

Still, Rodriguez remembers being touched by the fact that Wolfe and his staff told him there was a spot waiting for him in gymnastics, when other college coaches weren’t so sure.

“They didn’t even see the injury,” he said. “They didn’t know anything about it. But they said, ‘Come here and we’ll deal with it. Full scholarship. We’ll see you through this thing.’ They weren’t putting one foot through the door and leaving one foot out. They were jumping right in there with me.”

So Rodriguez decided to begin rebuilding his gymnastics career, but only after convincing his doctor that the comeback was possible.

“You know doctors,” Rodriguez said. “Sometimes they kind of tell you the worst. Before the surgery, I went in and he told me the knee was completely torn. He said, ‘You may not be able to do gymnastics (again).’ I told him, ‘You better fix it so I can, because I’m going to try anyway.’

“He figured I was going to go for it anyway, so he fixed it tighter and stronger than he would for an average person. He did a great job.”

Rodriguez was a redshirt at Fullerton last season and used the layoff to rehabilitate the knee and regain some confidence. He returned to competition this season. “This was the year for me to touch bases with competition again,” he said, “to get back in the sport and get a feel for competing.”

Things have gone slightly ahead of schedule. The NCAA championships begin today at UCLA, and Rodriguez enters the meet ranked fifth in the nation in all-around with an average score of 56.58. He’s 10th in floor exercise (9.68), 15th in parallel bars (9.57) and 19th in vault (9.50).

Rodriguez and Li Xiao Ping, a member of the Chinese national team that won the silver medal in the 1984 Olympics, are two big reasons the Titans enter the NCAA championships as the No. 2 team in the country. Fullerton is percentage points behind No. 1 Oklahoma.

Wolfe’s calculated risk with Rodriguez appears to have paid off beyond his overactive imagination. “I didn’t really expect to use him in floor and vault this year, and he’s one of the best in the country in both events,” Wolfe said.

Along the way, Rodriguez has developed a close friendship with Li, who was his roommate for the fall semester until Li’s wife arrived from China. Wolfe had picked Rodriguez as Li’s roommate early last fall. “He’s just so relaxed with people, regardless of their status,” Wolfe said.

What followed was something of a cultural exchange program.

Rodriguez helped Li become Americanized. He took him to Disneyland. He helped him with his English. He explained Halloween to him.

And in return? “What I’ve gotten is a really good friendship with someone from another country,” Rodriguez said. “Xiao Ping has taught me a lot. I learn a lot from watching him in the gym. He doesn’t really have to say anything, because his body language talks for him.”

Rodriguez’s body was telling doctors that his career was in question two years ago, but he didn’t listen. Before the injury, he was aiming to become a collegiate All-American and a member of the 1988 Olympic team. Wolfe thinks those goals are still within reach. Rodriguez is certain of it.

“They’re the same goals I have now,” he said. “I just had a little delay, that’s all.”